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Does Facebook really have a future?

Would you invest in a fad? (Fox news POLL )

Facebook is priming the news cycle, setting Wall Street a-buzz with the news of its pending IPO. Stocks may have an initial value of $34/share. Investors are lining up for bidding war. Is Facebook a good investment? In the short term, probably. Further out? I'm not so sure.

Facebook, a come-out-of-nowhere success story, has relied on venture capital for years now. Venture investment is optimistic and holds to a longer view on returns. Once Facebook is fully public, it must submit to the quarterly earning cycle, reporting on to shareholders on short-term forecasts. 'Shareholder value' trumps 'vision.' Does Facebook, a broker of other people's information, have a future? Will they as profitable as they would like Wall Street to believe? Maybe not.

The tech world is less in love with Facebook than the mainstream press. Facebook came onstage five years ago when 'social' was the new thing.' Facebook's strategy orbits their original success, continually refining their social sharing model.

Facebook stopped innovating years ago.Worse for them, the company has failed to find any success in the mobile world. It faces a future of obsolescence and  the risk of a new entrant like Instagram. 'Mobile' worries Facebook.  Why? 'Mobile is a Web-less Internet paradigm. Mobile apps don't have Facebook 'Likes.' But 'Mobile' is going to be big, very big.

Marginal innovation. Faddish product. Troublesome reputation. Weak customer loyalty. Treating people like 'product.' Media hype. Does this sound like a good investment to you?

Interested in the Facebook phenom? There's the Facebook Project, a video channel of social media experts sharing their opinion. I also recommend reading last week's Forbes article 'Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years.' Good points, though I disagree about Google's prospects.

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Our two realities: Intuition and Rationality

What makes us so human? It is more than computational smarts: it is our brain's two hemispheres and how utterly unalike they are.

It is no longer accepted theory that the two halves of the human brain, Left and Right, are contrasted by "expression versus logic." Iain McGilchrist, Oxford psychiatrist and scholar, says they are different in the way they perceive the world. The Left hemisphere is dedicated to narrow focus, efficiency and task-at-hand. It hungers for precise data, the implicit and the obvious. The Right hemisphere sees a broader picture and the way things are interconnected. The Right drives speculation and synthesis.

The two halves balance each other within human sentience. We see the detail and postulate about possibilities. We can balance Reason and Intuition. We are both Kirk and Spock, and for good reason.

McGilchrist claims our brains relied on this necessary balance to advance humanity. He also says today's life balance is shifted to the Left brain. We "live in a paradoxical world" favoring the Left and ignoring the Right. Modern life deluges us with detail which the Left craves. Our hurried lives are controlled by onerous, rules-based bureaucracies only the Left can parry.  Our now-dominant Left society creates more data, more rules and more control.

The result may be a "paranoia in society." The Right hemisphere starves, unable to express itself in an ever mundane, detail-oriented world.

Are we staggering away from our true nature?

A delightful RSA animation of McGilchrist's lecture on the Divided Brain (12 minutes)

The Left , with its craving for reason, is a "faithful servant" utterly devoid of intuition. It can hammer a nail to a post, but it cannot design a building. Or understand why architecture is a marvelous thing.

McGilchrist quotes Einstein: "The Intuitive Mind is a sacred gift and the Rational Mind is a faithful servant." It was Einstein's speculation led him to his many discoveries, not his computational superpowers. Science leaps forward, innovation by innovation, discovery by discovery, always cultivated by Right brain curiosity

Have we become a society of clever dullards? Did we "create a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift?"

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I do not love thee, Gov'ner Mitt,

You're a RINO, all do admit;

And this I say and won't remit:

I do not love thee, Gov'ner Mitt

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I am the one who gets up early in our marriage, usually hours before my wife. Since I enjoy cooking, it's become our tradition to make a big deal about Sunday breakfast. I don't mind the extra time it takes to make a special meal form scratch. I also think the scents of a cooked breakfast lures my wife out of bed.

This is my recipe for breakfast pizza. It fills the kitchen with the aroma of toasted cheese and onions. My wife is never late to breakfast when I pull this out of the oven.

Ingredients

• 1 pre-made, thin pizza crust
• 1/2 red pepper
  
• 3 green onions
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/3 tsp red pepper or more to taste
• Cheese: either mozzarella, asiago or a mixture of both
• 4 eggs
• 5 strips of cooked bacon
• 1 tsp thyme
• Dried pepper flakes, to taste
• 1/2 tsp Kosher salt

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 450F.
2. Wash onions. Trim off ends but keep the green stalks. Slice thin.
3. Slice the red pepper into thin, nearly translucent rings. Pat dry.
   
4. Mix olive oil, onion and thyme in a small bowl. Let set for ten minutes.
5. Crumble bacon. Set aside.
6. Spread onion-oil mix over the pre-made crust to about 1/2 inch from the edge. Reserve 1/2 tablespoon oil.
7. Sprinkle with cheese(s).
8. Arrange the red pepper slices on top of the chees
9. Sprinkle bacon atop the pepper slices.
10. Season with salt and pepper flakes.

Some Notes:

You can use other pizza toppings like Italian sausage or mushrooms. Less is more with the cheese. Just sprinkle enough to cover the crust.

Timing is everything! Do your best to pull the pizza out of the oven as soon as the eggs are done.

This would be a great brunch or dinner entree.

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Romney and Gingrich shoot each other while Conservatives rally to Santorum

The GOP race for the 2012 presidential election is still as volatile as it was when I last wrote about it. GOP leadership was hoping for an early end to primary uncertainty with a single front-runner. This would give skeptical Republicans a chance to warm up to the inevitable 'last man standing.'

That hasn't happened. Front-runners Romney and Gingrich each won a primary but mutual attacks exposed their many flaws to conservative voters. Paul kept a steady-state in voter percentage. Rick Santorum, the one person almost all conservatives like -- or at least don't dislike, surprised the pundits by sweeping three caucuses in a big way. Everyone likes an underdog-coming-from-behind story. It may be that GOP voters have made Santorum their 'Not-Romney' of choice.

I reworked my spreadsheets based on the latest candidate developments. Romney and Gingrich both fell in my 'Worth' spreadsheet. I am no longer convinced either of them will do much to remake entitlement programs. Romney's MBA skills make him more of a COO than a CEO. Operations men manage, they don't reform. Gingrich is too tied to big government entities for my taste. ('Historian?' What is that?) Romney also fell because of his past support for abortion and homosexual marriage. I still remain surprised that Ron Paul is the most Worth-y to me, but I like the things he says, except for his isolationist opinions.

The big shift is in the Real-Win-Worth grid. Santorum has pulled ahead of his competitors in the Win axis. He now has the highest score for a consistent, motivational message. Santorum doesn't sound like he's reading from a script like Romney, and his strong wins in MO, MN and CO show he can inspire voters to action. Gingrich lost points for 'presence and style.' The media is pulling away from him. Romney also lost 'presence and style' ground with his comments about "the poor."

On the Real axis, the candidates' positions shifted: President Bush The First walked back his Romney endorsement; Gingrich lost his biggest financial backer; and Santorum got the blessing of some very important conservative media superstars.

Looking at all the candidates, the two closest to the true 'electable' zone (strong campaign plus voter connection) are Obama and Santorum. Obama risks  sliding the wrong direction in the 'Win' direction if voters are turned off by his negative rhetoric. Obama remains financially strong, but it takes more than expensive advertisement to motivate unhappy voters.

It's do or die these next few weeks for Santorum. He's already the most appealing to the conservative base. That's a plus. Still, his 'ifs' must quickly align: IF Romney goes on the negative attack, IF Gingrich descends further into vengeful neurosis, and IF Santorum scores a big win against Romney in Michigan, the former Pennsylvania senator may pull a surprise win.

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